Benedict Joseph Flaget - Early Church Work in America

Early Church Work in America

As a consequence, in 1792 Flaget left France with other members of the Society and traveled to the United States as refuges from the terrors of the Revolution, arriving in Baltimore on March 29, 1792. After only two months in America, the Bishop of Baltimore, John Carroll, sent him to Fort Vincennes in the Indiana Territory to staff the Church of St. Francis Xavier, founded by Jesuit missionaries in 1748, before their Suppression and expulsion by British forces in 1763, and which had then gone without the presence of a resident priest for decades.

Flaget's journey west on horseback took him through the Allegheny Mountains to Fort Pitt, the area now known as Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A letter of introduction from Bishop Carroll provided an introduction to General "Mad" Anthony Wayne. Travel was to be by flatboat down the Ohio River. Due to low water conditions he stayed at Fort Pitt for a few months, learning the English language and tending to persons afflicted by an outbreak of smallpox in the area. Flaget left Pittsburgh in November and traveled down the Ohio River to the Falls of the Ohio (Louisville), where he continued on his journey to Fort Vincennes with George Rogers Clark. They reached the fort on December 21, 1792.

At Vincennes, in addition to his pastoral work, Flaget founded a school and library in the church (now the Old Cathedral and Library), the oldest educational institutions in Indiana. At Vincennes he ministered to the Catholics at the small parish located there and also tended to the Native Americans, especially nursing the Miamis and other Indian tribes, and baptized many of them.

On April 23, 1795 Flaget was recalled by his superiors to Baltimore. He traveled down the river to New Orleans and from there sailed to Baltimore. He then taught at Georgetown College for the next three years.

Flaget left Baltimore with two colleagues in 1798 bound for Cuba as part of a Sulpician mission to establish a college on that island. They were met with opposition from the local clergy, however, and were not able to celebrate Mass in Havana. During that stay, he contracted yellow fever and was left behind when the other Sulpicians decided to return to the United States. He recovered and acted as a tutor to the son of a wealthy Spaniard. Later, after the death of the Archbishop of Havana, he was again permitted to celebrate Mass at the church of the Capuchin friars. While he was in Cuba, Louis Phillippe of France and his two brothers had arrived there on their journey in exile. The refugee aristocrats were befriended by their fellow Frenchman, Flaget, in 1800. This was a kindness which Louis Phillippe remembered and returned when he later ascended the throne of France as King.

Flaget returned to Baltimore in November 1801. He brought with him 23 young Spaniards whom he had recruited to study at Georgetown College. He then spent the next several years in various posts at that school.